Manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to reduce their material costs for producing items in order to compete in the marketplace. Additionally, environmental concerns have prompted many companies and individuals to reduce, reuse, and/or recycle products to minimize the impact on the environment. Yet, every year, even in the face of these considerations, billions of new compact disks (CDs) and digital video disks (DVDs) are produced and distributed to consumers. These disks hold audio content, video content, computer software, advertisements, and all sorts of other media.
Every month, approximately 50 tons of CDs become obsolete, outdated, damaged, or otherwise unwanted. One can imagine that a similar amount of DVDs also become unwanted each month. This amounts to a huge waste of resources. Today, CDs and DVDs are recyclable, but the reality is that very few actually are recycled. Part of the reason that more disks are not recycled is the difficulty on the part of consumers to locate and ship unwanted disks to recycling centers.